The graduate

We'd been practicing the kindergarten speech for so long without being totally certain that Ads was even going to attend his graduation that I once asked him directly if he would mind if he missed it. He didn't seem to care one way or the other. In hindsight, considering how awesome it turned out to be, I'm glad we didn't move to Gurgaon a week earlier, I'm glad that S attended it (even though I missed it), and I'm so very glad Ads got to be there, robe and all, and pick up his graduation scroll from the Principal :)

Now - a disclaimer. All this while, I've thought the whole fuss about KG graduation, elementary and middle-school graduation, which is part and parcel of school life in the US (perhaps in other western countries too, but I'm not sure) was all so much hogwash. Absurd, even. It seemed to be an excuse for promoting mediocrity. I mean - you're supposed to study hard and pass on from one grade to the next. That's your job as a student. Why make a big song and dance about it? And it also seemed to me to take away from the final high school graduation, which of course is a big deal; especially in countries where a lot of people don't go on to college. However I suppose I'm hypocrite enough to support songs-and-dances as long as my kid is involved ;-) Perhaps for little boys and girls, it's a nice way to transition them to 'big' school. And as S wryly observes, for all the money that we are shelling out for tuition and other extras, the school better put on a show for our benefit!
Ads spoke his rehearsed few lines very well, and thankfully, my camera-ignorant husband managed to get a good video of it. Father and son had a sumptuous lunch at school and clicked a few pictures including one with Ads very wonderful class teacher. Father in particular really lucked out that day because he left home just as the packers arrived and returned after they had left. The mayhem in between was unimaginable. 6 guys - all in different rooms - throwing our stuff randomly into cartons, no labelling being done on any of the boxes, mattresses being dragged all over the common areas in the dust and dirt without any packing, and Y whining incessantly. I was close to tears. I'd planned ahead and asked one of my maids to come in around 9 and take Y to the park so that I could focus on the packing. Guess what happened. The maid walked in two hours late. I couldn't even yell at S because I had insisted on him going to school. The last straw was when one of the guys managed to pack the pulao that I had cooked at 5 am that day, along with the raita that accompanied it!!!!!!! The imbecile apparently didn't notice the two fat ladles sticking out of the pans. This was the same fellow who also managed to tear the legs off from my computer table so he was both clumsy and not very bright.
Go ahead and call it plain stupidity on my part to have volunteered to do this by myself with Y around to provide backing vocals :) Sometimes I just think I'm so smart and capable and bite off more than I can chew. Finally, the moving guys left, we handed over the flat keys, stopped by for a quick goodbye to the folks at Y's school, and headed down the highway for Gurgaon. It was only when we were halfway there that I remembered to ask Ads how the graduation went. By which time he was fast asleep!
So that was our moving day. Pure nightmare from start to finish (for me). I'm not posting about how we worked round the clock to get the new house up and running in 2 days flat. What was the tearing hurry, you may ask? None whatsoever. We just wanted to be done with it. And to prove we could :) The A-type personality lurking within us comes to the fore every now and then ;-)